“People would say this was the bad side!”: An ethnography of everyday strategies for managing place stigma.

“People would say this was the bad side!”

An ethnography of everyday strategies for managing place stigma.

Nicolina Ewards Öberg

Figure 1: Welcoming sign into Backa Röd. Source: Nicolina Ewards Öberg 2020.

Department of human geography Degree 30 HE credits

Urban and regional planning

Master’s degree in urban and regional planning 30 HE Spring term 2020

Supervisor: Danielle Drozdzewski

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“People would say this was the bad side!”

An ethnography of everyday strategies for managing place stigma.

Nicolina Ewards Öberg

ABSTRACT

This thesis investigates the myriad of responses and complex relationships residents have to the stigma attached to their neighbourhood, one categorised by the police as socially vulnerable (Nationella operativa avdelningen 2019). This research explores the narrative of place to diffuse some complexity around the multidimensional positions people have to stigma and stigmatising imagery of place. Drawing on qualitative interview material, with past and present residents in Hisings Backa, this thesis explores the narrative of stigmatisation from experiential and temporal perspectives of understanding the place of Hisings Backa. Using a feminist approach, the research highlights the importance of understanding everyday experiences of place and space in the context of locating the wider effects of place stigma.

Keywords: neighbourhood, boundaries, inter-geographies, intra-geographies, images, stigma, socially vulnerable, experiences, stories

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CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION 4

1.1 AIM AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS 6

1.2 CHAPTER OUTLINE 7

1.3 BACKGROUND 7

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND PREVIOUS RESEARCH 11

2.1 THE MILLION HOUSING PROGRAM AND THE SUBURBS 11

2.2 SEGREGATION AND SOCIALLY VULNERABLE NEIGHBOURHOODS 13

2.3 NEIGHBOURHOOD: COMMUNITY AND LIFE COURSE 14

2.4 BELONGING TO PLACE: IDENTIFICATION, BOUNDARY PRACTICES AND STIGMA 16

3. APPROACH 18

3.1 ENTRANCE TO THE FIELD 18

3.2 METHODOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOGY AND ONTOLOGY 20

3.3 SITUATED KNOWLEDGE, POSITONALITY AND REFLEXIVITY 21

3.4 RESEARCH ETHICS 23

3.5 LANGUAGE AND POWER 24

4 EXECUTION 26

4.1 AUTOETHNOGRAPHY 26

4.2 QUALITATIVE ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEWS 27

4.3 WALK-ALONGS 30

4.4 ANALYSING AND MAKING SENSE OF THE MATERIAL 31

4.5 LIMITATIONS AND COVID-19 31

5. EMPIRICAL DATA, FINDINGS & ANALYSIS 33

5.1 WALKING IN TO THE FIELD 33

5.2 INTER-GEOGRAPHIES IN THE LANDSCAPE 36

5.3 NEGOTIATING THE IMAGE OF PLACE 41

5.4 CONSTRUCTING MEMORY OF PLACE 44

5.4.1 IDENTIFYING EXPLANATORY MARKERS IN THE NARRATIVE 46

6. CONCLUSIONS 49

BIBLIOGRAPHY 51

PARTICIPANTS 58

INTERVIEW GUIDE. TRANSLATED VERSION 59

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PREFACE

First and foremost, I would like to thank all the people who participated in this thesis, who shared their stories, memories, thoughts and experiences with me. This would never have been possible without you.

No less thankful am I to my supervisor Danielle Drozdzewski. Through times of struggle as well as in times of hubris your mentoring and guidance has been invaluable.

I would also like to send my biggest of thanks to my dear friend Clara for all your support and help along this writing process.

Last but not least I want to thank Josef, for everything every day.

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1. INTRODUCTION

I’ll tell you this, I’m happy I grew up there. That I got to see all of that and at the same time I’m happy I was able to get out. But I never felt unsafe. And now, I have a lot with me from that time in my adult life. I know how important it is that people get opportunities for education and work and so on. That’s important, that people don’t feel like they are failures’ just because they live there. (Interview Sarah)

The opening quote reflects the trajectory of segregation and an example of living with place stigma – I started with it so it could echo through this research, as it does through places stigmatised, past and present. This thesis draws from 11 qualitative interviews, conducted both in the field and over video during February, March and April 2020. Positioned in a tradition of feminist urban research, which has focused on the inequalities generated by stigmatisation and social polarisation, I investigate “the suburb” as a place constructed through conversations, representations and lived experiences (Roelofs & Salonen 2019). For the scope of this thesis, place is used as the heuristic to investigate stigma in a neighbourhood trajectory and through the life course. However, places are part of, and entangled in, other frameworks such as class, ethnicity and gender. The experiences and consequences of stigma and segregation on/for different groups have been extensively researched and shows that segregation has gender specific affects (Zuccotti & Platt 2017). Stigma and segregation also have ethnic and racialised underpinnings that shape and influence both people and places in society (Molina 1997, Droogleever Fortuijn et al.1998, Lobo 2009, Wacquant 2015, Andersson & Malmberg 2015).

That being said, I acknowledge from the outset that I understand place as being shaped by gendered, ethnic and racialised components, but my focus in this thesis has not been on these components. Rather, I focus on how social polarisation and the experiences of stigma attached to place are felt by residents, who move in and or out of the life course of this place.

This thesis’ social and academic contribution is its focused charting a trajectory of place stigma over time, from early neighbourhood formation to present day. By investigating life course and trajectory of place over time, stereotypes about stigmatised places can be scrutinised. Such stereotypes often position that problems in neighbourhoods stem from the concentration of certain marginalised groups (Hastings 2004:236). The temporal explorative approach of this thesis moves away from placing blame on place and/or people. Rather, it investigates how the conditions of stigmatised neighbourhoods are the consequences of wider contextual processes.

Residential segregation is a growing issue in Swedish cities (Andersson et al 2009). The effect of segregation and segregated neighbourhoods is the homogenisation of residential

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neighbourhoods in terms of social composition in the local population. This decline in social mix also means that Swedish neighbourhoods are experiencing greater polarisation between them (Lilja & Pemer 2010). The polarisation relates not only to social composition, but also to housing segmentation, a concept that describes the tenure and housing types dominating different neighbourhoods. The geographical aspects of housing segmentation shape the ways in which people settle and therefore the concentration of tenure groups in different parts of the city (Andersson et al. 2009). Certain types of housing can be (literally and figuratively) bound to certain types of neighbourhoods, which have consequences for that neighbourhood’s residents. These consequences may differ between residential areas but, they can also differentiate within a single neighbourhood. Some neighbourhoods experiencing internal divisions are characterised by combinations of single-family houses, condominiums, and public rental houses, each separated from each other in distinct ways in the geographical landscape.

This separation can create tension between residents as well as struggles with neighbourhood identity

The impact of the neighbourhood and home environment on people’s life course has long been discussed in geographic scholarship. Researchers have debated whether the social status and recourses of some residents will affect the life of others, living in the same neighbourhood (Arthurson 2013, Andersson & Malmberg 2016, Chetty et al. 2016). The idea of neighbourhood effects has been incorporated into Swedish political debate as well (Socialstyrelsen 2010) and resulted in state reforms and programs to get at the issues of segregation (Vedung 2005).

This thesis will investigate intra-neighbourhood experiences of segregation and stigma in one of Sweden’s suburban neighbourhoods that has been identified as socially vulnerable. The negative consequences of social polarisation serve as a motivation for studying insider experiences of segregation because they have relevance for both individual and the greater society. People living in neighbourhoods from The million housing program (see section 2.1), and other neighbourhoods identified as socially vulnerable, have been perceived as being passive victims of the “concrete suburb” (Ristilammi 1994) and stigma attached to these neighbourhoods (Lilja & Pemer 2010)The materiality of the built environment have been given power to the extent that the myriad of social layers in these places have been made redundant.

I argue in this thesis for greater attention payed at understanding place from the perspective of experience.

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1.1 AIM AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The thesis investigates the attachment of stigmatizing identities to place as a process, how stigma is articulated by both insiders and outsiders and how this stigma is experienced and understood by the residents of stigmatised neighbourhoods. In this thesis I categorised a stigmatised neighbourhood as one that has been formally identified as a socially vulnerable neighbourhood¹ (Nationella operativa avdelningen 2019). The thesis’ focus on process is twofold and entail (1) how these stigmatising processes are narrated and understood, and (2) how people position themselves in relation to effects and consequences of stigma. To facilitate this investigation, I developed three research questions that will help operationalise the research aim:

1) How do people living in a stigmatised neighbourhood construct stories of place?

This question aims to understand how people experience and know the identity of place, including considerations place over time. To address this question, I interviewed people who grew up in a stigmatised neighbourhood over different time periods. Through this generational interview design I gathered support for how stigmatised neighbourhoods stay stigmatised over time.

2) How do people in a stigmatised neighbourhood negotiate and understand ideas and images about the place they call home?

In this second research question, I focus on living in and with stigma. Here, I developed and built on the generational interview design to highlight the contingency of stigma, and how repetitive stigmatising acts cement images of deprivation. In addressing this question, I discussed how representations of place were communicated and adapted by non-residents and how residents positioned themselves in relation to these representations.

3) How is intra-neighbourhood stigma constructed, expressed and understood by residents within Backa Röd and the surrounding neighbourhood?

1 A socially vulnerable neighbourhood is a geographically restricted area characterised by resident’s low socio-economic status and where criminals have power to impact the local neighbourhood. This impact is rather linked to the social context in the area than criminals elaborate will to take over and control the local community.

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The third question spatialises the research and locates it to a place and its surrounding neighbourhood. As such it addresses how boundary making occurs within a neighbourhood and it sustained over time. This question illuminates how stigma is a multi-layered and multifaceted process that branches out and differentiates within a neighbourhood that, seen from the outside may be understood as equally stigmatized and segregated.

1.2 CHAPTER OUTLINE

This thesis starts with an introduction. This first chapter presents the research aim and questions as well as the thesis’ relevance and contextuality. Following that, a further section describes the background of the geography of the research. The second chapter positions my research within the body of literature and theory. Therein, I present the scholarship I have drawn from and outline the theoretical framework on which I have built my analysis. Chapter 3 lay out the methodological consideration and positions the thesis within feminist research approach, and the forth chapter present the methods used in the field.

The following fifth chapter presents, analyses and critically discusses the empirical material.

The empirical chapters align with the research questions posed in Chapter 1. The thesis ends with a concluding discussion, comprising a summary and suggestions for further research.

Lastly follows a list of references, a short list of the participants and a copy of the interview guide that was used in all of the interviews.

1.3 BACKGROUND

In the section that follows I will present the thesis geography which was focused on (1) the city district Hisings Backa in Gothenburg, Sweden and (2) a neighbourhood called Backa röd, a small neighbourhood within the city district Hisings Backa.

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Figure 2: Map over Gothenburg. Source: © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Figure 3: Map over Hisings Backa. Source: © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Hisings Backa is a city district located on the island Hisingen in Gothenburg, Sweden. In the late 19th century Hisings Backa was used as farmland, providing the city and its residents with fruits and vegetables (Selmastad.se). The city district consists of large areas that owes its shape and form to The million housing programs of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Parts of which is now being renovated and rejuvenated within the project called Selma Stad. This rejuvenation

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program aims to ”provide the area with resources for social integration at different levels where the diversity of people can be reflected in the built environment” (Detaljplan 2-371) and to

“provide a variation of tenure forms and housing sizes that makes it possible for different people to settle and stay in the area, which can promote a socially sustainable district.” (Detaljplan 2- 371). The motivation for developing and building in Hisings Backa entails a number of both normative and idealistic values about neighbourhoods and neighbourhood composition.

Rejuvination projects are legitimised through the identifying of problems in a neighbourhood, this is always constructed with the rest of society as a background (Roelfs & Salonen 2019).

In Hisings Backa the image of a problem-oriented place is further enforced through the formal identifying of the area as a socially vulnerable neighbourhood (Nationella operative avdelningen 2019). The Swedish police upholds a list over neighbourhoods in Sweden with significant problems with segregation and crime. This list is used in various government efforts to manage these problems. Neighbourhoods are identified as socially vulnerable based on a number of criteria and they are ranked on a scale. The scale reach from an area at risk, a socially vulnerable and finally a significantly socially vulnerable area. On this scale Hisings Backa is identified as being socially vulnerable and the definition of such an area is as follows:

An exposed area is a geographically defined area that is characterised by low socio-economic status where criminals have an impact on the local neighbourhood. The impact is rather connected to the social contexts then these criminals desire to take control and have power over the local community. The impact by these criminal people consist of pressure in different ways such as blackmailing and threats or more indirect threats about things like:

- Public violent actions or hurting a third party.

- There can be open and visible drug traffic and,

- Acting out one’s feelings of discontent towards society.

This is resulting in resdents in the neighbourhood feeling unsafe which in turn leads to lower tendencies to report crime or take part in lawsuits. The situation is considered serious. (Nationella operativa avdelningen 2019:4. Author’s translation).

Hisings Backa is not only identified as a socially vulnerable neighbourhood by the police and experienced that way by many residents. It is also spoken about in that way in the media and the (re)presentation of this place in the press was during the early 2000’s focused greatly on the ongoing gang rivalries that were leaving their mark in the urban environment in this neighbourhood (Svt 2011, Expressen 2009, Bäcklund, C 2011). The shootouts and casualties from the violence in this neighbourhood grew in number over the years to follow. The normalization of violence that this time and these riots resulted in can be detected in my

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interviews where the level of violence that is viewed as normal or something that is everywhere, is quite severe. The city district administration together with the police conducted, in 2015, a study to inspect how safe people living in northern Hisingen felt in the urban environment where they live. The study showed that one of those places that people reported they felt unsafe was Selma Lagerlöfs torg, the square in the middle of Hisings Backa that is not being rebuilt (Trygghetsundersökningen Norra Hisingen 2015:4). In the survey 47 % of the people asked who live in Hisings Backa reported that they felt “very safe” outside at night in their neighbourhood, 31% answered “moderately safe”, 12 % “neither or”, 7% “moderately unsafe”

and 3 % answered “very unsafe” (Trygghetsundersökningen Norra Hisingen 2015: 84).

Within Hisings Backa is a neighbourhood named Backa Röd. This neighbourhood was built during The million housing program and is by locals identified as the place in the area where the events reported on takes place. Residents have, since the early years of the neighbourhood, understood this part of the landscape as a, to various degrees, troubled place. However, it is Hisings Backa in its entirty that is formally identified as socially vulnerable, not just Backa röd.

This dissonance between outsider representation and insider experiences is focal point for this research project. The thesis investigates expereinces of place within a neighbourhood that, by outsiders have been categories as a socially vulnerable area, but with residents underlining the fragmented landscape that make out the place. The participants in this thesis illuminate the layered narrative and identity of place and, present an image of an intra-geographical landscape that do not align with the image of a neighbourhood in despair.

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2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND PREVIOUS RESEARCH

In this chapter I discuss the theoretical framework and previous research that make out the basis for my understanding and analysis.

2.1 THE MILLION HOUSING PROGRAM AND THE SUBURBS

Close to twenty percent of Swedish housing stock was constructed during The million housing program years. Between 1965-1974, 1 005 578 new homes were built (Boverket 2020). The name million housing program came to as a result of the stated goal to produce a certain volume of housing. The goal was reached through rational and industrial ways of housing construction (Boverket 2020). The housing shortage was an important political issue in Sweden throughout the post-war period. The country had seen an economic rise after the Second World War and urbanisation, growth in population and wages, plus the price-regulated rents, increased the demand for new housing in the country (Boverket 2020).

Following The million housing programs (year 1964-1975), several Swedish cities were left with neighbourhoods entirely made up by housing from that period (Urban 2018). The buildings initially represented modernity (Hammarén 2010) and people who had previously lived under poor conditions in the inner city were now able to move to the new suburban neighbourhoods into spacious apartments. The part of the population who came to inhabit The million housing programs were less economically affluent people and immigrants. This demographic concentration was a partly a result of that periods economic inflation, as well a tax reforms, making it highly profitable for people who had the means, to invest in property (Urban 2018).

Consequently, previous middle-class residents bought single family houses and moved away from The million housing program neighbourhoods leaving them, in some areas, close empty.

This made way for newly arrived immigrant families and less affluent people to get a contract in these neighbourhoods (Bråmå 2006, Grundström & Molina 2016).

The current housing market situation has not resolved issues of social polarisation. In Sweden, the housing market is characterised by competition, which has intensified segmentation

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between the part of the population who can enter the housing market and, through mortgages buy a home, and the part of the population who are referred to the residential rental market (Andersson & Malmberg 2016)

Given these histories, the million housing neighbourhoods have never been ‘neutral’ places (Backvall 2019, Roelofs & Salonen 2019, Molina 1997, Urban 2002; 2018). They are bearers of values and understandings that cannot be isolated or separated from embodied experiences of being in those places and spaces. The suburbs, as a constructed concept, are places that exist due to our conversations about them (Lahti Edmark 2003). Representations of place effect people’s and emotions and understandings of those places and can lead to stereotyping and stigmatisation of places (Hastings 2004). Drozdzewski and Norquay (2017) have drawn attention to the activities and events that can shape and cement an image of a neighbourhood, which is difficult to remove. Through an investigation about media coverage of violent events taken place in a neighbourhood in Sydney, Drozdzewski and Norquay (2017) showed how media representation can lead to one-dimensional understandings of place. The representation of the riots illuminates the production process in stereotyping a place. The events, reported about in the media, functioned as identity markers for this place and were used in the everyday negotiations and understandings by outsiders as well as residents.

The million housing programs are represented as places that turn people in to passive victims of the concrete (Daun 1974, Ristilammi 1994). They are portrayed as problem areas on the outskirts of society (Molina 2000, Jones & Jackson 2012, Backvall 2019) and, people living in these stigmatised places do not always have the opportunity, or the power, to tell the story of their neighbourhood (Arvastson & Suur-Nuuja 2002). For example, in 1994 Per Markuu Ristilammi investigated how Rosengård came to be a notorious place, that is by media, represented as dangerous. Rosengård is a neighbourhood in Malmö, built during The million housing program years, and that has become well-known through media coverage about the violence and other criminal activities taking place there. I have taken inspiration from Ristilammi in the sense that I also grew up in the place I am now studying. By using the expert knowledge about a place one can only gather from knowing it intimately, we get to know the layers of a place, the trodden paths from years of daily activities of peoples’ everyday life.

Through an insider driven approach it is possible to illuminate the structures that allow for some people and some places to stay alienated in and in relation to the rest of society.

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2.2 SEGREGATION AND SOCIALLY VULNERABLE NEIGHBOURHOODS

Residential segregation is defined as the separateness of marginalised and affluent groups in terms of geographical location of housing and neighbourhood (Andersson & Malmberg 2016).

Inherently geographically bounded, residential segregation locates to specific parts of a city’s landscape. However, effects of residential segregation move beyond that geography and into the social spheres of life too. Research has extensively focused on consequences of segregation for marginalised groups as a result of segregation, (Lilja 2002, Waquant 2007, Slater &

Anderson 2012, Jensen & Christensen 2012, Droogleever et al.1998, Fincher 1991, Salonen et al. 2018). However, it should be noted that high income areas are often more homogenous, the difference is that this separateness rarely has negative impacts on these residents’ lives (Andersson & Malmberg 2015).

The Nordic countries in general, and Sweden in particular, have long been classified and highlighted as examples of tolerance, integration and places where multiculturalism has been successfully achieved (Pred 2000, Andersson & Kährik 2016). But, studies show that segregation, both ethnic and class segregation, are rife and growing issues (Pred 2000, Molina 2008, Ericsson et al. 2000, Grundström & Molina 2016). The contribution of this thesis is to segregation scholarship and especially in its novel extension of this scholarship regarding insider experiences of segregation and place stigma. The suburbs, as both constructed concepts and places (Roelfs & Salonen), have been forced into a role in the political power struggle where the state can use the suburbs, and the narrative about geographically specific issues, to assert its role as a stable and force full state (Dahlstedt et al. 2018). The image of the suburbs as deviant can serve as a way for the power to both keep and deepen its position, because these images connect the problems in society to specific geographical places. Further, the image places the problems outside of the majority society, it places the problems somewhere else and the narrative creates the image and sense of control because it is made clear where and who the problem is (Urban 2018).

The discursive effects of segregation and socially vulnerable neighbourhoods have showed to be wide-ranging and trickling down to numerous aspects of society. Consequences of changing political rhetoric and discourse is investigated by Tedros (2008) , where they concentrate on the

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political project Storstadspolitiken (prop.1997/98:165, bet. 1998/99:AU2, rskr.1998/99:34)).

The aim was to have uninterrupted political attention directed at the big city regions, to combat the growing inequalities and issues that had been identified, such as the need for increased job opportunities and problems with segregation. Tedros (2008) argued that prior to the launch of Storstadspolitiken (prop.1997/98:165, bet. 1998/99:AU2, rskr.1998/99:34), cities had been portrayed as consisting of a myriad of identities where the suburbs, despite of their social issues, were possible growth areas that would benefit the country. After the launch, social issues were highlighted and, the image that the suburbs create, and hub social vulnerability was constructed.

As a result, inequalities in terms of what social groups tend to live in neighbourhoods that are subjugated to place stigma, namely immigrants, are veiled under the label socially vulnerable neighbourhood. The term socially vulnerable exchanged the previous terms that pointed to these neighbourhoods being immigrant dense. Now, it was presented as being more of a neighbourhood issue than an integration issue. This argument corresponds with argument made by Andersson & Molina (2005) who have stated that by adopting an understanding of segregation as being solely an issue about the separateness of people from different class strata, the relation between ethnicity and segregation is obscured and hidden.

2.3 NEIGHBOURHOOD: COMMUNITY AND LIFE COURSE

Neighbourhood effects have been investigated from a variety of angels and fields focusing on the effect of welfare benefits in neighbourhoods (Mood 2010), impacts on income due to neighbourhood poverty during adolescents’ years (Galster et al. 2007, Holloway & Mulherin 2004). It has been argued that neighbourhoods that are stigmatised risk foreclosing the possibility of forming a sense community between residents (Waqcuant 2008; 2014). The stigma stands in the way of people feeling a sense of community. However, studies have shown that there is not a linear relationship between stigmatising representation and community practice in neighbourhoods that are classified or understood as deprived. In Van Eijk (2012) the idea of narrative and stigmatisation and possible community formation going hand in hand is challenged. The paper calls for a layered investigation of neighbourhood relationships in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Van Eijk (2012) argues that the portrayal of disadvantaged neighbourhood as socially dysfunctional not only deepen the weight of stigma, but it also risks misrecognising practices of community that are taking place. I argue, in this thesis, that sense

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of community and neighbourhoods are both geographically as well as emotionally important to people (Mahmoudi Farahani 2016) but, these concepts are complex and need to be understood as changeable and fluid because of the relational character to them.

Studies show that growing up in a segregated neighbourhood, will have effects on aspects of your life such as level of income and education (Otero et al. 2017). These effects have been shown to be gender differentiated in terms of labour market participation. Zuccotti & Platt (2017) showed that women tended to be subjected to the negative aspects whereas the men enjoyed some advantages from the ethnic segregation in their neighbourhood. Countering this, other scholars have argued that the impacts that neighbouring, and neighbourhood effects have socio economic resources later in life has been presented in a somewhat unnuanced way (Brännström 2004)

Neighbourhoods that have been formally identified as socially vulnerable are portrayed, to the public, as single identity landscapes, opposite of the fragmented reality. By identifying and labelling a neighbourhood, or a city district, as socially vulnerable the layers of place is veiled under that label (Backvall 2019). This identification allows for a stereotypical understanding of these places as threats to society (Roelofs & Salonen 2019). Identifying neighbourhoods and classing them as socially vulnerable is a political act that have emotional and implicit consequences. It transmits value and transcend social ideas on to the built environment, connecting people to places that are, in the societal landscape, forced into the role of “the other”

(Dahlstedt et al. 2018). The representation of neighbourhoods as socially vulnerable presents society with the idea that socially vulnerable places do not have layers to them. This presentation of place urges the need to investigate insider understandings of landscape boundaries and neighbourhood identity.

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2.4 BELONGING TO PLACE: IDENTIFICATION, BOUNDARY PRACTICES AND STIGMA

Following the effects and affectual role neighbourhood and community have on identity construction, as well as life course consequences, this thesis pay extra focus on intra- neighbourhood and inter-geographical boundary practices as a way to negotiated place stigma (Verdouw & Flanagan 2019). Previous research has paid extensive attention to practices of neighbourhood identity negotiation with and insider- outsider perspective (Klocker 2015, Warr 2005b). This thesis charts to understand intra-neighbourhood practices of stigma and boundaries as notions of understanding oneself in relation to intimate social geographies.

Social life is always situated both in space, defined by Massey as a locational relation to other social phenomena, and going across space. “Given the conception of space, a ´place´ is formed out of the particular set of social relations which interact at a particular location” (1994:168).

By adopting the idea that place and space are relational concepts it further demands the idea that all things are constructed in and through their relationship to others (Rose 1997). This relational view on the suburbs, as products of conversation and representation is central in this investigation.

Through Massey (2005) the suburbs can be made understandable both as spatial coordinates as well as narrated, constructed sites of the mind. The time-space relationship that binds the social to the spatial can be expanded on to understand the spatial trajectory that people, who live in stigmatised neighbourhoods, relate to when constructing both narrative of space and of self. To be able to overcome inequality in the urban environment, space needs to be open to change in terms of writing, and re-writing history, stories about space, and in terms of usage and definitions of space (Massey 2005). This idea is one key motivation for my research project.

To bring to the foreground the multiplicity of stories and meanings of a place that have been locked to a specific identity through repetitive representations. Molina (1997) wrote in their doctoral thesis about the Swedish contextually emerging discourse and effects of segregation.

Molina (1997) states that understandings and tacit truths about segregation and the stigma that often comes with it, is closely connected to prevailing, contextual political norms. Molina (1997) uses hegemonic power structures to understand ethnic segregation through the argument that, to understand segregation, especially ethnic segregation is it important to understand

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structures of power. Ethnicity is, like class, a concept or a position that is produced as a result of uneven power dynamics in society.

Neighbourhood segregation and socio spatial imagery of stigma create a myriad of possible positions and identities for residents as well as people on the outside. The positions taken by residents differentiate depending on individuals other possible countering positions. One such countering position can be class belonging (Pinkster 2013). The paper showed that the middle- class residents tended to downplay the problems in the neighbourhood and take the positions that it was just a place to live, not their identity. People take on different approaches to deal with and position themselves to stigma and stigmatising imagery. Distancing and boundary practicing is not equally possible, or easy for all people. Pinkster et al. (2020) investigate diverging experiences of stigma in a deprived neighbourhood in Amsterdam. The results show that individuals identities, unrelated to neighbourhood, and personal material resources intersect with narratives about neighbourhood, allowing for diversified stigma negotiations.

Garbin and Millington (2011) pointed, in their study on urban marginalisation in post-riot Paris, to the variety of practices people turn to in their negotiation of stigma. One such approach is the construction of symbolic inter-geographies through which one can create and assert distance between oneself and the image of decay. Preece (2019) investigate and show how residents use identification, dis-identification and the micro-differentiation of space as strategies for negotiating emotions of belonging to place. Further, Lobo (2009) composes, in their article, the argument the boundary making practices in terms of ethnicity and neighbourhoods can function both as a dividing marker as well as a practice that blurs fixed categories and makes way for new relationships. The need to further investigate practices, negotiations, stories and the everyday life that takes place in those neighbourhoods that are, by both insider and outsiders, represented as disadvantaged and socially vulnerable is imperative. These spaces are part of the micro locality in terms of being peoples home environment, but they are also agents as well as political tools in the wider metropolitan and global discourse about access to the city and what role the social landscape have (Watkins 2015).

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3. APPROACH

This chapter will present the decisions and considerations that guided my field work as well as my analytical work. The basic assumptions, the ontological and epistemological view that was guided by my research question and research aim will be focus of discussion in order to account for the results and findings. This thesis has used a qualitative ethnographical research design and the material has been gathered in the field together with the participants. I am not concerned with presenting any sort of generally applicable truth or rule about the effects of segregation, rather the thesis will focus on the personal stories of people living in and with segregation in this neighbourhood. The data I collected and analysed will be discussed in a wider societal context of stigma and place to allow for a discussion about the macro perspectives and consequences of segregation and stigma in Sweden are made tangible and visible in relation to the stories gathered from my participants.

3.1 ENTRANCE TO THE FIELD

This thesis was initiated by a memory from my childhood. I grew up in Gothenburg in Hisings Backa, an neighbourhood that has for decades been focal point of debate about and efforts for dealing with crime and social polarization. The area is planned as a cake pattern with distinct lines between the neighbourhoods with the square in the middle connecting them. I started to think about these lines, these boundaries between the neighbourhoods within and how clear, how obvious they felt when growing up. And then I remembered one effect of that, the name

“Lilla Pakistan” (translated means little Pakistan). The neighbourhood on the left side of the road made up by apartment blocks in concrete grey and brown that was referred to as “Lilla Pakistan”. I reflected upon the fact that I could not recall this name ever being problematised or questioned by an adult, ever, when I was a child. This memory is what sparked my research project. I wanted to know what these stigmatizing boundaries does to a place and to the people in it.

Participants were recruited through a Facebook group in which I posted and introduced myself, the research project and described the criteria for participation. I gave a brief introduction of the research question in the post and wrote that I was interested in the everyday life of people

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living in this neighbourhood over time. I stated the requirement that the participants should be people who grew up in the neighbourhood. I defined grew up as having lived there during sometime between birth and their 20s and not by their own choice, this to eliminate people who had perhaps moved here when moving away from home in their early 20’s. The loose and generous definition of "grew up" was adopted to acknowledge that this is a personal definition.

Some people count growing up somewhere as the place you were born and lived the longest during adolescent years. Others define it as the place that you felt affected and shaped you the most during your childhood. Participants from the Facebook group also made way for snowball effects and some participants were referrals by personal contacts, with the requirement that the people who were to participate did not have a connection to me.

I recruited people who had grown up in Hisings Backa, and specifically Backa röd during different decades, from the late 1960s when it was built up until present days. I limited the population to those who grew up there, that is people who had not chosen the place for themselves. I was interested in the experiences of segregation that, when able to one could opt out and move away or chose to stay. If I had instead decided to focus on the people who had made the choice to move there the thesis would have taken another turn. The involuntary aspect makes tangible and enables the investigation of distancing and positioning in relation to a place that you have been identified with without the possibility of choice with regards to home address.

Initially the geographical area was restricted to the neighbourhood called Backa Röd. This area continued to be the main focus. However, as the thesis progressed it became clear that the incorporation of participants from the surrounding neighbourhoods in Hisings Backa could contribute to the understanding of how the narrative of place is constructed and the intra- geographical boundaries affect residents. Participants early on expressed understandings about Backa Röd in relation to the surrounding neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods functioned as the background up on which the description of Backa Röd could be laid out. The incorporation of residents from surrounding neighbourhoods within Hisings Backa showed how the area is full of geographies within. This decision to involve people from the wider area led me to post in the Facebook group a second time. This time I announced that I was looking for people from all over Hisings Backa. The limitations of time of residency still applied.

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The sample of participants was to represent residents in the neighbourhood over time. There were no requirements with regards to socio-economic status of the participants. The sole requirement was residency in the neighbourhood during a time that the participant defined as applying to the definition "grew up". However, the sample turned out to consist of people who close to all had moved away from the neighbourhood when given the chance (Waquant 2007).

The move from the neighbourhood was communicated as a conscious choice due to external circumstances such as other residents, development in the neighbourhood that was perceived as negative and insecurity about raising children in the neighbourhood (interview material)

3.2 METHODOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOGY AND ONTOLOGY

Through a feminist methodology (England 1994) I have aimed to adopt a perspective from within and from below. Feminist geography is a scholarship that allows for and attempts to shift the perspective in research to allow for new and diversified views on power, and more importantly to illuminate how power shapes conditions for people who are socially and geographically distanced from this determining power.

Methodology is the place from where you are standing when asking the question, it is the presupposition that guides what you want to know and how you want to know it. My research process started with a memory from my childhood, the memory of the name “Lilla Pakistan”.

This name was not discussed in light of it being problematic and stigmatizing, it was just a name like any other. But of course, it is not just a name. It is a frame work that allows for some and prevents other types of understandings of the place as well as allows for and prevents certain positions for the people who reside to this neighbourhood.

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3.3 SITUATED KNOWLEDGE, POSITONALITY AND REFLEXIVITY

Feminist epistemology and ontology rests on the resistance of the idea that there is an objectivity in social research, or any research (Haraway 1988). It is grounded in social constructivism and upholds and argues for the notion that the world lacks essential values.

Rather, the world is constructed and produced throughout (Ashton & McKenna 2020). The idea that knowledge, is situated instead of an artefact, that can be gathered in the field and later on used to generalise and explain other social phenomena, have been criticised by many feminist scholars (Rose 1997, Skeggs 1994, England 1994). Ethnography and ethnographic fieldwork is not a method or methodology for collecting and presenting the real world. It is diving in to someone else’s life, looking around, listening to their stories and trying to understand how their being in the larger context of the world is understood and made sense by them (Skeggs 1994:75)

That is, I did not construct the worlds of the young women; their worlds are still there now that I am not.

Rather, I constructed a discursive representation of it. I discovered elements of their world through the discursively/ socially constructed concepts that were available to me. Whenever we speak of write about a reality, the language we use is not the reality to which it is supposed to refer.

This point to the duality of situated knowledge and knowledge production. It is not only contextual in the sense of there and then in the field but also in the context in which it is written down as an account of the field. The production of knowledge is constructed, not only in situ, but also by a someone, which requires a reflexive scrutinization of the positionality of the researcher. The social lives we as researchers’ study and produce knowledge about is filtered through a lens. This lens dictates what types of knowledge, interpretations and understandings that is possible. Positionality entails all that shapes the researcher to take on their work in the way that they do. Their cultural and spatial baggage and their intellectual glasses (England 2017). The researchers being in world will shape the way they are able to investigate the world of others.

Instead of trying to understand why people understand and position themselves in certain ways I want to understand how people understand themselves in their own social and spatial context.

Merleau-Ponty (2006:13) writes that our perception is oriented towards things and when we

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perceive things, they become constituted and the foundation of our experiences. This points to the embodied relationship between people, places and spaces. The perception of the ongoing world encourages the ongoingness of places and spaces in people’s life, illuminating how we live with place and space. This thesis will investigate the diversity, the layers and the trajectory of place through stories from within to understand how this place is experienced and the relationships in and with place.

My prior knowledge and shared experiences, of growing up in this neighbourhood, with my participants have played a significant role in the project and I have had to work with this throughout the process. It is easy for people to leave things, details out of the story when they think that you understand without them having to literally tell you about it. I have tried to be attentive to these tendencies and make sure to ask follow-up questions, to create a conversation that encourages the participants to reason and negotiated with the story out loud. But this is not always possible. Somethings are unconformable to talk about with strangers and if you believe that the person will understand without you having to say it, then it may be easier to communicate the message without the specific words. I have used my insider role and written myself in to the story if the place by sharing my experiences of the place with the participants.

By participating in the interview as an insider I have been able to keep the storytelling flowing, to stop at crossroads along the way that an outsider would have driven past due to their insignificant appearance.

To study the everydayness of a social place you need to know what this everydayness entails, what is the normality and what breaks with that. For this research my presence has been both shaping and definitive. My prior knowledge and personal experience of this place has served as an entrance to the field that would not be possible for a total outsider. The reference points I share with the participants has both opened up conversations as well as guided them and, the conversations have been built upon the sharing of experiences of the same place. It has allowed for some details not having to be explicitly explained as well as allowing for the interviews to move around in the neighbourhood both geographically and temporally. My knowledge and role as an insider allowed for the conversation to jump between different times in place and back again.

In the early stages I referred to the participants as informants but learned this to be an incorrect term to describe what was taking place in the field. Participants did not function as a source of

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information, a well were I could go and collect accounts of reality. Instead they were giving me permission to take part in their sharing of memories, opinions, negotiations and experiences with regards to my role as an insider to some extent. This role demanded a great deal of me as a researcher. To constantly be aware of what was happening and distance myself from my presuppositions and prior knowledges to not risk missing practices that was taking place due to my shared references with my participants. I needed to constantly ask the question: is this communicated in a way that requires insider knowledge and if so what kind of knowledge?

With regards to this I chose to refer to the people who partook in this research project as participants. They have participated in a study that I have designed where we together have steered the direction of the project. I have throughout aimed to be flexible and to have a fluid and changeable approach in the ethnographic field as constantly noted and analysed shifts in place and space.

3.4 RESEARCH ETHICS

I have, before every interview asked for permission to record the interview as well as informed the participants that they will be anonymous (vetenskapsrådet 2017:13). All have been informed about their right to end their participation whenever they choose to. Participants who asks to read the final paper will have access to it but, I have not openly offered to send them the final thesis.

I have anonymized the participants (Vetenskapsrådet 2002) but not the neighbourhood itself.

This is to protect the integrity of the participants but at the same acknowledging that what is central in this investigation is not the participants’ individual stories. These stories are treated as representations of values and expressions that are found in society at large. I have chosen not the anonymise the neighbourhood, but I have had to make decisions about wording and terminology. This is a neighbourhood, which in popular speech, is called various problematic names, names such as “Little Pakistan”. The main road going through the neighbourhood has been referred to as “The Berlin wall”. I chose to use these names in the text when referring or discussing something that has come up during the interviews. As a researcher I need to use the terminology of stigma to reach knowledge about how it works and operates. The following section will discuss considerations of language, translation and power.

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3.5 LANGUAGE AND POWER

The fieldwork for this thesis was conducted in Swedish and the transcriptions were later on translated into English. This proved a difficult task because of the, sometimes, sensitive nature of the participants responses. The translations have not been written word for word or in an exact way. What was important was not the correct translation but rather the correct and inclusive account of what and how something was expressed. This conversion from the fieldwork being executed in one language and the written account of that fieldwork in another language forced me as a researcher to be extra careful as well as detail oriented. It is important to follow the ethical rules of research conduct in all stages of the work. Moving from one language to another puts that skill to the test in many ways and it challenges you as a researcher and writer to paint a translatable picture of the material that does the participants justice in the same way as in the original language.

Krzywoszynska (2015) argues that translating material from one language to another is not about correct, word for word translation but rather understanding and giving representative accounts of the world of other people. I have, in my role as a researcher, the final power in representing what happened in place (Gilbert 1994) and it is a sensitive task writing peoples personal accounts of their lives in place. The power imbalance is not only present in the writing period in research project, the asymmetrical power dynamic can be extensively present in interview situations (McDowell 1992a). There is often an imbalance in power that can be sensitive, especially when researching people in vulnerable situations or people on an activist mission. It is important that researchers make it clear in the field why they are there, what they are doing and what they are not doing. Otherwise a dilemma can occur where the participants believe and start to rely on the researcher’s ability to help or make a change. It is crucial to be transparent and aware of the power structures that are present in the field (Aspers 2011).

This thesis takes of the difficult task of writing about stigma, without participating in the production of stigma. The participants have introduced me to the power of language and the role of language in boundary practices and stigmatisation. One of the ways this was illuminated was by referring to the neighbourhood Backa Röd as “Lilla Pakistan” (Translated means Little Pakistan). I have used quotation signs to mark a distance and to point out the arbitrary character of the name and at the same time allowing for an investigation of its powers in stigma

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production and othering of place. The name is part of the boundary creating act that is othering a place and creating inter-geographical landscapes.

The terminology used to describe the neighbourhood is chosen after careful consideration. The language we use as researchers is not a language isolated from the rest of the discourse nor the public debate. We work and produce in a wider context and the material we produce are part of a wider network of value production. With regards to this I have chosen to use the term “socially vulnerable” when talking about the image and representation of the neighbourhood in focus.

These terms are used by professionals in Swedish politics (Tedros 2008) and they are, more than others, used to speak about issues in neighbourhoods that can be dealt with (Nationella operativa avdelningen 2019). Using socially vulnerable as a concept for talking about these neighbourhoods is motivated by (1) its hegemonic status in Swedish segregation debate, (2) the participants adherence to this terminology when talking about the neighbourhood in focus and (3) its, more than others, underscoring of the relational character of place rather than for example the concept “problem areas”. Socially vulnerable links place to other processes and context in society and points to these places being part of greater society, they do not exist in a vacuum. However, the terms used in this thesis are not neutral words and I have throughout the research project been sensitive and careful in my writing process not to reproduce a negative imagery. It is difficult, sometimes nearly impossible, to distance the research about a place from the language and representation used by both the public and local residents to understand and describe the place.

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4 EXECUTION

In this chapter follows a presentation and review of the methods used to conduct the fieldwork for this thesis. Through a collection of methods this thesis has been ethnographically

developed and carried out to allow for a deep understanding of experiences of place.

4.1 AUTOETHNOGRAPHY

Autoethnography allows for the researcher to become an embedded subject of the study at hand.

It enables a close relationship between the author and the field and, it draws attention to this relationship and the implications it has on both the field as such as well as the possible knowledges produced in the field. This method illuminates certain issues that the ethnographic researchers face such as risks of portraying situated knowledges that are contextually bound as if they as generally translatable to other contexts, and, at the same time opens up for deeper discussions about the situatedness of knowledge and knowledge production. Though autoethnography we dismantle the relationship between the researcher and the researched (Butz

& Besio 2009:1660).

Being in the field, the lines between me as a researcher and the participants, the research objects, were to some extent blurred from the beginning. My experiences of this place, my previous embeddedness and belonging was seminal for the project and the sharing of experiences between me and the participants drove the project. It allowed for different turns to be taken in the narrative, a narrative that was being laid out relied on tacit knowledges and shared stories.

I have, through out, been treated as a local, as someone who belongs and understands the things that are unspoken (Voloder 2008). This incorporation in the world of the participants as someone who is self-evidently an insider encouraged a autoethnographic approach and perspective. In this thesis I deploy an auto‐ethnographic research approach to scrutinise and understand insider experiences of place by also engaging in my own, personal experiences of place stigma of this neighbourhood. The stories told to me by the participants have throughout resonated with my experiences and I have chosen to use my insider role as a resource and as part of the research approach (Voloder 2008).

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However, the autoethnographic account and its role in this research is not solely relevant with regards to my prior and shared knowledge with the participants, in the context in which the research is situated. Rather, its most central contribution is the emotional understanding and bodily memories of this place the resonate with the emotions expressed by the participants. The accounts about being in and belonging to this place arose the sense of being in their stories for me (Berry 2017). The feelings I share with participants and that become tangible when the interview touched upon shame and forced accountability for events taken place in my neighbourhood. The autoethnographic orientation in the field requires and demands a great deal from the researcher. It is an energy draining and frustrating task. It is a constant battle with self- exposure and reflexivity (Berry 2017).

4.2 QUALITATIVE ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEWS

To access narratives about this place, the stories about life here, I need to talk to people. I have therefore chosen to conduct semi structured in-depth interviews. The semi structured interview seeks to get at the individual’s description and depiction of their lifeworld. This method is often used when researchers have a need to steer the interview and at the same time allow the conversation to have a fluid character and the participant to be able to associate and build the story as it is being told. In the qualitative interview, we as researchers are always observing what is happening in situ, there and then, and at the same time we are being observed by the participant.

Interviews are not merely a way of collecting data in terms of the spoken word, it is an embodied encounter, a situation where things happen and are being created (Thanem & Knights 2019:78).

Taking place in the interview situation between the interviewer and interviewee, the researcher and the participant are a multitude of expressions and negotiations. The data collected in these situations are not to be seen as clear facts but situated constructions and products of this shared embodied experience of being in that place and space. Interviewing should not be seen as a way of just making inquiries, it is a participating act. To reflect upon one’s memories and experiences is not solely giving an account of what happened and what was. It is the act of constructing and shaping the story of what happened and what was. Our memories and the way we account for our experiences are not clean-cut transcriptions of reality. They are individual